


Alihotsy, Aconite and Amortentia

by EliMorgan



Series: EliMorgan's Rare Pair Marriage Law AU [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: All of the Rare Pairs, Angst with a Happy Ending, Animagus Pansy Parkinson, But That's Also Just Karma, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Smut, Forced Marriage, I hope, Idiots in Love, Lavender Brown Being A Cow, Love/Hate, Lucius Malfoy is flamboyant and mostly harmless, Matchmaker Pansy Parkinson, Mental Health Issues, Minor Violence, Pack Dynamics, Political Uprising, Rare Pairings, Remus Lupin Lives, Remus Lupin Needs a Hug, Severus Snape Being a Bastard, Severus Snape Lives, Sexual Content, Swearing, Werewolf Lavender Brown, Werewolf Remus Lupin, alternate universe - marriage law, but also snark, lots of snark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-03-31 12:50:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13975515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EliMorgan/pseuds/EliMorgan
Summary: 4th May, 2000: The Ministry of Magic passes its Marriage Act. Lavender Brown doesn't care. She really should.An experiment in SS/LB romance with lots of swearing, growling, and sass. They're both horrible people, but that's mostly okay.(Marriage Law. EWE. Werewolf!Lavender.)





	1. Miss Havisham: Now Available In Pink

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome, Reader, to my rare pair haven.
> 
> We begin with Lavender Brown and Severus Snape, both characters drenched in vitriol by sections of the fandom, both of whom speak to me on a purely bitchy level. There is no mopey yearning here, oh no sir-ee, because while that loveliness has its place, Lavender is A GROWN WOMAN and SHE DON'T NEED NO MAN (actual character opinion); and Severus's worst nightmare is to marry a woman with no actual intellect who spends half an hour in a morning making sure her ribbon is straight and also can't cook to save her life - and that's before you add in the fact that she's a werewolf, and we all know how much Severus hates werewolves ("I'll drag the werewolf. Perhaps the dementors will have a kiss for him too—").
> 
> This also is a place where my typical writing rules flew out of the window because Lavender's head is a scary scary place, full of wandering, winding roads that mostly lead back to chocolate, wine and Bruce Willis. She really, really likes Die Hard.
> 
> That all being said, I'm fond of where I've gotten to so far here and I hope to continue along this vein! Please let me know what you think!
> 
> Love always, Eli x
> 
> P.S. Opinions stated in this chapter and those following bear no resemblance to those of the Author. Opinions, stated positions and references are all put in for the effect of the character and story, and in no way are meant to offend the audience. Author also claims no ownership over Harry Potter, the characters and plotlines therein, and neither does she claim ownership of any other work, art, literature, film, invention or media referenced in the course of this fanfiction. 
> 
> P.P.S. Neither does the author recommend this type of relationship as one that is healthy and stable. In all likelihood it isn't, but this isn't real life, and can we really imagine characters this f-ed up to come together with any semblance of normality? Your average couple probably lives with a very low chance of encountering flying frying pans to the head, and despite how exotic it sounds, the lack of that risk is probably what makes a healthy relationship (Author is just guessing on that point, she wouldn't know a healthy relationship if it punched her in the ears, but this is what one is supposed to say, yes?)

On the 4th May, 2000, the Ministry of Magic passed its Marriage Act. The Act had been in consideration since three months after the War, when the Ministry had finally begun reorganizing itself, and the population numbers were finally scrutinized. It was hailed as the solution to a dropping birth rate, fewer magical marriages, and the end of blood prejudice as the wizarding world knew it.

And for Lavender Brown, it meant marriage to a half-blood/muggle-born of  _their_  choosing.

Now, Lavender could care less about blood purity. She could care less about Dark, Light and Grey magic. She didn't care about dropping birth rates, or fewer magical marriages, or anything the Ministry cared to harp on about; she was a bit too concerned with herself.

For good reason, too. During the Final Battle she'd suffered a devastating attack from the most notorious werewolf in living history, Fenrir Greyback, that had left her scarred all down the left side of her body with most of her organs having to be magically reconstituted, a case of trauma that therapists had been known to fistfight each other to treat, and the legacy of being the only known woman to have contracted the werewolf virus outside of the full moon.

(At least she'd killed the bastard. There was nothing like vengeance to cleanse oneself of the feeling of impotence. Nobody knew how she'd achieved it, but it seemed one moment she'd been laid in a pool of her own blood with the nasty bastard munching on her intestines, and the next she'd clobbered him over the head with a fallen brick and slit his throat with his own claws, just to make sure he was dead. Some theorised that it was the same phenomenon that allowed women to lift up cars to save their infant children, but couldn't understand where the sheer force of will to do it came from – she didn't, after all, have any offspring. Lavender thought that this was accurate, only she knew where the will came from – she didn't have any children, no, but she did have something she loved just as much: herself.)

Still, even someone as completely self-absorbed as Lavender couldn't miss the air of panic and urgency that clogged the streets in the months running up to the bill's passage. The newspaper had spoken of protests and rallies, published photographs of Hermione Granger stood atop the statue in the Ministry atrium, still dressed in her work robes despite her decidedly anti-Ministry stance on the issue. Ginny Potter, despite being happily married, had been spotted arriving at a Harpies match wearing a shirt bearing the slogan ' _women are not cattle',_  with the Ministry's logo emblazoned beneath it, a huge red cross slashed through. International stars such as the Weird Sisters, Viktor Krum, the youngest Scamander and Harry Potter himself had all come out to the press, condemning the law, demanding that the Wizengamot just  _let the fucking thing die_.

All to no avail.

And that was about the point that Lavender started paying attention.

The legislation had been brought before the Wizengamot for approval at exactly eight a.m. on the 2nd May 2000. The bureaucrat behind that move seemed to think that if it passed on the anniversary of Voldemort's death, people would be more receptive to it (see: would not riot) given that it would be disrespectful to storm the ministry on such an auspicious occasion.

Y'know, even though the Ministry had exactly  _shit-all_  to do with the defeat of Lord Voldemort.

Of course, people fought back. At the memorial ceremony held each year, Lavender had stood in the crowd to watch the 'Golden Trio' take the stage, their Order of Merlin: First Class pinned to their robes, and proceed to verbally slaughter the government. " _Where are they now?"_ Potter had demanded, in an impassioned speech clearly written for him by Hermione Granger. " _As we stand here to honour those who fought for our freedom, those that would capitalise on their sacrifice hide in government, working to put chains on their children. We, all of us that were here that day, all of you who suffered at Hogwarts in the run-up, all of you who lost mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives – the list goes on. Those of you who bear the scars of your torments, of over twenty years of fear and pain… they dishonour you, and us, by forcing this law upon us."_

He'd shaken up his sleeve and leaned forward on the podium, completely at ease despite the camera flashes and questions shouted at him from the press, making eye contact with nearly every mourner, sharing their grief. His hand gripped the back of the lecturn, and the flashes of the camera bleached out his skin until only the bright red scars on the back of his hand remained – I MUST NOT TELL LIES – a beautiful, poignant picture for the press, no doubt.

" _This government is the same government that refused to accept Voldemort's return,"_ Harry reminded the crowds, his voice rising above the rest of the rabble. " _We are not fooled by a change of name, a different face. This is the same government that refused to put their full resources towards helping rid this world of a_ terrorist _, leaving the fighting to our young. Many of the people we honour today were only children – seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, younger. They had been tortured at school – under Umbridge, assigned by this government, and then under the Carrows, whose scope for torture knew no bounds and yet was not restrained by authority. And then these children were asked to fight, to bleed, for a cause most of them didn't understand but were relied upon to forward. Tell me, is that right?_

_"_ _They blame us, the victims, and use their ill-gained power to force us into yet another impossible situation, demanding we give up our blood, our bodies and our souls into their keeping._

_"_ _They will tell you that this is different. That the Minister is different, the cabinet different. They will say that this Law is for our own good, that the deaths and lapsing fertility have taken their toll on our population and we now need to regroup –_ forcibly _. They will use every tool in their arsenal to make you believe that selling your daughters, sisters, mothers into this…_ reproductive, sexual slavery _is acceptable, but we must remember that it is_ not _._

_"_ _When I left this castle two years ago today, I'd thought that was the end. There was no more evil to fight, we could go home and rejoice, party and make love and work and play in happiness and safety. I have since realised that evil is not only a person. Nor is it a malevolent force you can see coming a mile away. What I fight now, and beg you to stand with me against, is the everyday evils. The everyday evil of a government who claim too much power. A government who would make half of our population second-class citizens. A government who, despite changes in leadership, remains the same bloated, bribe-taking, racist egotists we fought to be rid of. We_ died  _to be rid of."_

He'd been the figurehead of a movement, riling up the emotions of everybody in that courtyard and the halls that surrounded it – and the truly exquisite thing was that the Wizengamot was locked in session, unaware of how beautifully he had flayed them until they adjourned for the evening. Even Lavender, so dull inside nowadays, had felt the irresistible thrum of revolution in her veins. If there had been one thing the wizarding public had learned after the war, it was that Harry Potter was generally right.

Even though he usually wasn't.

But it was nice to have something to believe in, even if it was a scruffy orphan with bad hair, an irritating wife and weird looking children. Even if it only lasted for a day.

Now, four hours after the law had passed, Lavender sat in her living room, skimming the  _Daily Prophet_ and running her fingers over the cool face of her DA galleon. More of them had been produced as their circles expanded, but Lavender was proud to be the owner of an original, and a member of the inner circle through which messages were passed before being sent out to the general public. She might never reply, but she was involved.

A message had come through at 3:42 that morning, only a quick one, from Ernie MacMillan. He was a dickhead, was Ernie, but he was also Amira Shafiq's Wizengamot secretary, which provided the group with an inside line into the negotiations. The Message simply read  _passed_ , throwing everything into uproar.

Hermione had been sending non-stop instructions through since four a.m. Lavender was mostly ignoring them, but she could imagine the woman's devoted followers going to work in other areas of the country, flashing around their houses to gather research and signs and anything else, then scooping up their wands and apparating to their designated protest-spots. Sending hasty owls and patronus (es? patroni? Who cared) out to their friends and family, warning them of the coming storm. Lavender herself, despite her generally nomadic status, had received five patronus this morning alone. Harry Potter was in Diagon Alley, showing his face for the crowds, with Ron at his side; Hermione was inside the Ministry, leading a strike from her desk.

Lavender was simply waiting. She did that a lot, nowadays. Waited. Waited for her injuries to heal, for the therapy to work, for the job applications she sent out to be rejected. Waited for the full moon.

Her galleon heated, jerking her out of her thoughts and back to the real world. She took a moment to allow herself to adjust, feel the grain of the rough-wood table beneath her fingers, the unpolished stones under her feet. Shortly after being released from St. Mungo's, she'd commandeered a dower house of hers in the country. It was surrounded on all sides by thick forestry, five acres of seclusion in which Lavender… well, sulked, mostly. She was self-aware enough to admit that. It was wonderful on a full moon, but every other day she felt like a premature Miss Havisham, only instead of a wedding dress her mourning-wear was bejewelled headbands and multi-coloured jumpers. Still, people didn't come here, and since they didn't come here, they didn't gawp and stare and give her pity as though it were a diamond necklace, with the air that she should be grateful. Since when should one be grateful for other people being pricks? She was scarred. Get over it.

Letters began to appear around the edge of her galleon, scrolling up and over themselves until the message was complete.

_SMT. 1 Aur & 1 MO, my place, just left. – HA_

She frowned, her brows knitting. As a sort-of mollifying gesture to nay-sayers, the Wizengamot had added an extra clause to the law; the only reason it passed against such overwhelming odds, in fact. It stated that the pairings would be made based on tests of compatibility, lifestyle and aptitude, aiming to find pairs as close to soul bonds as possible. This, they said, would ensure the happiness of each bonded couple under the new law.

They didn't seem to understand that some people just didn't want to get married. Didn't want a husband, or children, or any of the responsibilities that lay therein. And a soulmate? Perhaps that would have tempted Lavender five years ago, when she'd been all wide-eyed with youthful naivete and hope, still believed in 'Happy Ever After's, but now…

Well, now Lavender knew what sort of person  _she_ was, and while she had no problem with herself, the idea that there was someone out there to  _match_ her?

What was it the muggles said? Pouring gasoline on a bonfire?

She  _liked_ her life, her little cabin, her garden and her forest. She liked not being answerable to anybody, not having to deal with the venomous beast that was Wizarding Britain. She wouldn't move back to civilization if you paid her, and a husband would most certainly want to do that. Never mind everything  _else_ he'd want to do, and she wasn't talking about the sex. He'd want to move in and take over, monopolise her time, fill her with babies.

All of that before she even addressed the issue of her lycanthropy.

Oh! She might be exempt because of her condition! Now there was a happy thought.

Hannah's message was concerning, though. The soul-mate bullshit was proposed to be carried out like so: you took yourself to the Ministry when your summons came, probably in alphabetical order, where some pseudo-psychic bureauprat would be waiting for you. They would take your wand, your blood, and give you a personality test. They would then compare your results with others, and a couple of weeks later you'd have a prospective match. Only, there wasn't anything prospective about it; instead there was the wand to your chest and the threat of Azkaban hanging over your head.

What Hannah had said was that the Officials (see: Pseudo-Psychic Bureauprats) visited  _her_. At  _home_.

This realisation was punctuated by a brisk knock at her door.

She left the paper open on her table, dropping the galleon into her skirt pocket, and checked herself in the mirror that hung in the hall. Still scarred, yes, but her eye-make-up was perfection, her hot-pink jumper loud as ever, her emerald-green skirt as poofy as it had been in the closet that morning, and her purple headband settled straight. She gave herself a smile, allowing it to become more natural as she scanned her appearance.

_Still got it, Lav!_

Throwing an extra shimmy into her step for confidence, she danced over to the door, her heels making a satisfying  _click-click_  on the stones as she went. Then she opened the door.

"Oh!" The woman knocking exclaimed, her hand flying to her mouth. If Lavender was in the mood to be charitable, she'd say it was because of the shock of seeing such a bright, chirpy young girl answer the door to what, from the outside, looked like a B-movie horror set. But Lavender was  _not_ feeling particularly charitable, not to the woman who intended to assign her a ministry-mandated beloved. Especially not when she had the gall to turn up at her door in what looked like a badly-tailored bin bag.

"Can I help you?" Lavender asked in her most gratingly cheerful voice, the one she reserved for society matrons whom she'd once heard call her an elephant-footed fattie.

Ms. Ministry glanced nervously back at her companions – two Aurors, one of whom was obviously fresh out of Hogwarts, complete with pubescent acne, the other who looked like Fenrir Greyback's more depraved cousin. "Miss Lavender Brown?" Ms. Ministry squeaked, her voice akin to a buzzsaw for Lavender's sensitive ears.

"Yes, that's me," she replied, still grinning cheerily. She looked over her shoulder, giving Auror Preteen a slow once over, biting her lip as she did. "And you are…?" she elongated the syllables, practically purring. She'd have played the trick on Auror Pervert, but he looked too much the type to come back later, and she'd already killed one man. Best to keep that number level.

Auror Preteen blushed all the way from his hairline to his shirt collar.  _Yep_ , Lavender praised herself,  _definitely still got it_.

"I am Madame Bunting," Ms. Ministry told her with a token attempt to match Lavender smile-for-smile. She didn't really have it going on – for a woman whose job it was to ensure happy marriages, her face was awfully maudlin. "This is Auror Eades and Auror McCleod. May we come in?"

No, they may not. Lavender barely ever even invited her  _parents_ around, never mind faceless paper-pushers determined to control her love-life. She frowned, glancing between the group. "Am I under arrest?"

"Oh, no, Miss Brown, the Aurors are merely a precaution."

_Two_ of them? Hannah had only had one in her flat. Mind, she could probably only  _fit_ one in her flat, living on a barmaid's wage in central London as she did, but the point remained. Gods, Lavender really didn't want them in her house. It was her only safe place, for Merlin's sake. Was nothing sacred anymore?

She felt her galleon heat up again against her thigh, and smiled wider to cover the wince. "We're here from the Department of Births and Marriages," Ms. Ministry (because what sort of a name was  _Bunting_?) was saying, waving a sheaf of parchment in Lavender's face. "To carry out your pre-marriage testing in order to ensure we find the best match for you."

_Right_. What did they base this test on, anyway? Whether the government likes her or not? Because Lavender might be a werewolf, but she was also a pureblood, which must put her into some sort of neutral territory – as in, definitely too low on the food chain to be paired with a war hero, but not low enough to be paired with a Death Eater either. If she was lucky, she'd be given to some anonymous farmer in the middle of the country who would work all day and ignore her. "Oh!" She sang, channelling her frustration into keeping up her sunny façade. "Come on in! Would you like some tea? This is so exciting – isn't it? Isn't your job fun? You must get to meet so many people!"

Lavender stepped back while she gushed, ushering them down the hall and into the living-area, where two plush sofas sat opposite one another in front of a television, adjacent to a fireplace and a polished wooden coffee-table Remus had sent her in thanks for allowing him to use her land during the full moons. She cleared it, shoving half-read magazines into the drawers underneath and juggling empty mugs as she took them through into the kitchen. "I only have Yorkshire!" Lavender shouted back through the door, seeing Ms. Ministry take a seat on one of the sofas, the two Aurors stood behind it, doing a good job of looking vigilant. Auror Preteen (or, McPreteen, now that she knew his name was McCleod) had already written her off as a threat, but Auror Pervert was on alert. It was nice to not be underestimated, for once, even if he was a creepy-creep.

Filling the kettle took a second, and she read the message as it boiled. Susan Bones had also been visited by a Ministry worker, presumably from the same Department as Ms. Ministry. Hers had been accompanied by only the single Auror.

She paused, dithered, and finally shot off a note of her own just as the kettle began to squeal. She arranged the filled teapot on a tray with a collection of company china her mother had pressed on her, then returned to the living room, manic smile back in place. "As I said," she smiled, shaking her head, "I'm afraid we only have Yorkshire tea. Other teas tend to come out somewhat the worse for wear after encountering the local water."

Ms. Ministry nodded, smiling tightly. Circe, weren't they all just  _so_ pleasant this morning? "Miss Brown, do you understand why we are here?"

"Of course! I was just reading the newspaper when you arrived – it's this marriage law, isn't it? Though, the article did say we'd be summoned to the Ministry for the tests. It didn't mention anything about… well, this." She allowed suspicion to colour her voice as she waved at the three of them, looking so bland and out of place in her cosy little cottage. They were all wearing monochrome, black-and-white of the dullest order, except for the purple outer-robes of the Auror's office. Lavender's walls, by contrast, had been painted (painted being a somewhat loose term for 'throwing pails of the stuff at the wall until everything was sufficiently covered') with big splodges of primary colours, in some places running together into rivers of greens and purples and browns. It was abstract, she supposed, in terms of art, but she didn't really care for art and instead simply described it as 'bright' and 'cheerful', both of which it  _actually_  was.

Her mother liked to call it 'expensive' with pinched lips, but nobody listened to her.

Ms. Ministry shuffled her bottom uncomfortably. It had been caused by the change in tone, Lavender knew, because she hadn't skimped on the quality of her furniture, either. "In light of recent … events…" that was a lovely, polite way of describing 'riots', "the Minister and the Department thought it best if perhaps we were to deliver the tests to you, rather than the other way around. For safety and comfort, you understand."

Right, yes. That made sense. Hosting the tests in the Ministry would only invite the protesters inside, whereas bringing officials to one's doorstep at a seemingly random time and date would, effectively, neutralise that threat. And just in case, they're escorted by Aurors, to discourage attacks on the officials personally.

Though why Lavender would have  _two_ Aurors…

Right, yeah. She's a werewolf. Sometimes she managed to forget how other people saw her, but apparently the Ministry, despite the full-moon being two days away, were taking no chances.

A few years ago the assumption of her volatile nature would have angered her; nowadays, she only felt a weary sort of resignation. Hence the games.

"Of course," Lavender conceded, still smiling, despite the pit of emptiness that had just opened inside of her. "I'm ready if you are."

* * *

Pansy sent her a letter once the Ministry Officials had completed her test, mostly consisting of curse-words and insults towards the government. She'd not gone home for days, in the hopes of avoiding them, but they'd caught her in-between double shifts at St. Mungo's, locking her in the on-call room until she'd submitted. As a result she'd missed three hours of her shift, leading to disciplinary action.  _How can the fuckers justify this shit?_ She'd demanded, her writing punching holes in the parchment and leaking ink across the lines until it was nearly unreadable. _How fucking dare they. She was lucky to escape alive, the dumb bitch._

Pansy had also been tested by Madame Bunting. No doubt by the end of the interview, the poor woman had been praying for more werewolves.

Similar stories flew in from all across Wizarding Britain, about Officials turning up at pubs in the early hours of the morning, storming apothecaries in search of their charges, in one case appearing in  _Azkaban_ of all places to hunt down a guard who'd taken to sleeping in a vacant cell, so determined was he to avoid his fate. Some thirty people, including George Weasley, had been taken into custody for assault on a government official during the tests. They were released shortly after their cooperation had been assured, but the facts remained.

Finally, two weeks after the bill had passed, the entire population had been tested and catalogued, and were now waiting with bated breath for the results. Lavender had been inundated by letters and visits, all friends from her old life who needed someone to commiserate with and, knowing Lavender's reputation, determined to learn the gossip about everybody else. Even Hermione Granger had succumbed to the allure, turning up with a bashful Remus on the night of the previous full moon, claiming that she was there to look after them when in fact she used Lavender's moment of weakness to pry information from her.

Honestly, it was such an obvious ploy even Remus seemed embarrassed. Slytherin, Hermione was  _not_.

She allowed it, though. Mostly because it amused her. She could pick and choose what to share, keeping back true secrets while distracting her listener with the shinier, more juicy rumours. For example, Pansy had slept with Ron in April, and now worried that she might be pregnant. If she was pregnant, she'd be forced to marry Ron, and so was having a crisis about the matter – she couldn't stand him, but was it fair to hold back the information? When Hermione started hinting around Pansy, however, she'd given her a desultory 'she's fine' before launching into the much more exciting tale of Minister Shacklebolt and his much-younger chippie, an affair people speculated had lasted for nearly six months now, with nobody, except from Lavender, any the wiser as to the young lady's identity.

She'd enjoyed a half-hour of cat-and-mouse with Hermione after that, dropping little hints and clues about the girl into conversation, reeling her in while Remus looked on with amusement. Hermione thought she was too good for gossip most days, but Lavender had a way about her that could drive the saintliest woman to beg for more. If she hadn't been attacked, she might have taken over Skeeter's job at the  _Daily Prophet_ by now.

So, this month had not been as lonely as the ones preceding it, not with the excitement inherent in the population. Some people had stopped being concerned and instead had begun to get excited, like a husband could be a particularly wonderful Yuletide gift.

Not Lavender.

There was no place in her life for a husband.

There was only room for chocolate, lots of tea, and Bruce Willis.

And sometimes Pansy and Remus, but only because the two of them were very cuddly bears who actually enjoyed her company and didn't complain when she put her feet in their lap or ate all of their noodles.

The knock on her door that followed this was welcomed, even anticipated. It was late evening, and Lavender had been slouched on her couch, a glass of red wine in one hand,  _Clueless_ on the video-player, with no plans for the evening but to wallow. And generally, Pansy had a knack for finding her in this sort of mood.

She sauntered through to the door, straightening her ribbon (emerald green this time) in the mirror, before swinging open the door with a welcoming smile on her face.

Only for it to fall. Literally, the second she opened the door. Because that wasn't Pansy. That was a bloke. A tall bloke. One with long, black hair and an extraordinarily large nose. In his hands he held a wilted looking flower and a letter bearing the Ministry seal.

"No." she said bluntly, slamming the door in his face.


	2. Pearl Encrusted Coffins Just Seem Frivolous

Severus Snape was having a very bad day.

Originally, he'd thought he'd be exempt from the ridiculous marriage law thing, on account of being, well, dead. Well, not  _dead_  dead, but dead enough. Registered dead at the Ministry, hiding away in the Middle-Of-Nowhere, Ireland. The Ministry's reach, after all, did not extend to Ireland.

That thought had been shattered with very little ceremony when a dumpy, wrinkled witch appeared at the door to his cabin and demanded entrance, announcing that he remained a citizen of Wizarding Britain no matter where he hid, and therefore was subject to the law. Then, as though she meant to be  _encouraging,_ of all things, she added that "no doubt you're concerned about your prospective match, Professor, but worry not! Our tests are specifically tailored towards finding the most prosperous pairings available! You'll have yourself a lovely wife in no time at all!".

The most annoying part of that little speech hadn't even been the syntax.

A lovely wife. For him.

No.

He couldn't think of anything he'd like less than a twittering witch dangling off of his arm, demanding his attention, taking over his space, much less one who was supposedly his 'soul mate'. Knowing himself; all of his dark, unpleasant self… any match made with him would be a disaster.

He submitted to the tests because he had no other choice, but that didn't prevent him from tossing the self-righteous hag off of his property at the first available opportunity. He'd played with the idea of moving away, to somewhere more remote – would a hut on the Sahara be far enough away? – but discarded it just as quickly. If he were to run out on the law, they could bind his magic from afar with only the use of one of his belongings, and while he was a powerful wizard there were too many of his things spread across the country for removing them all to be a viable plan.

Instead, he took to his bed to sleep off his sudden migraine, only to be confronted with nightmares about who his match could possibly be. Having been a teacher at Hogwarts since a year after his own graduation, he was in the unique position of knowing most of the people who populated this country, and their parents, aunts, grandmothers; whatever female family members they might have. In terms of nightmares, however, this gave his mind plenty of ammunition.

There was a figure, melting and reforming with a thought, face slightly blurred and everchanging. They reached out a clawed hand towards him, cackling. The next image, he was handcuffed to the woman, who laughed as he tried desperately to escape, cooing mangled words at him in a voice that sounded like a mix between Bellatrix Lestrange and Alecto Carrow, their cold hands fisting around his arms, wrenching him closer to them, puckering up for a kiss that was penetrated by flicking serpentine tongues…

Needless to say, he did not sleep well. Not that night, and not for the following fortnight.

He'd received his share of conciliatory letters; Minerva, whose relationship with him had been repaired following the humiliating trial he'd sat through which, while it resulted in his exoneration, made life a daily struggle, with witches with glamour-red hair throwing themselves at him in the street and not understanding the word 'no', some of them people he'd taught over the years who should really remember the whip of his temper, and yet continued to barrage him with god-awful love letters (one of which had included a pair of well-used briefs, to his horror) and stroke at him with uninvited hands.

Little wonder that when he'd relapsed into a venom-induced coma, he'd decided that this time he'd stay dead.

Not that the world cared so much about what he wanted, burning off the remnants of the infection and bringing him back as he lay on a marble slab in the Malfoy basement, waiting for transfer to what he later found was a preposterously flamboyant coffin. Leaving Lucius in charge of his funeral arrangements had proved to be a near-fatal error for the young Malfoy scion, who experienced Severus's utter rage not ten minutes after the contraption had been gleefully revealed by a curiously disappointed Lucius (that the man was upset at Severus's continued existence did not particularly hurt, not when Severus knew him well enough to know that he'd rather a jolly good party than a best friend, any day. His own wife's wake had lasted three whole days and the hangover even longer).

Minerva had sent letters that held a definite celebratory tone, the older woman for the first time in her life grateful for her age and the 'infirmity' (as the Ministry classified it, despite the rest of the world calling it 'Menopause') that precluded her from participating. In the face of her own excusion, she'd found it in herself to be excited about what the law might mean for Severus, in the manner of some pushy matron aunt –  _Severus, I am sure it hasn't escaped you that you are not getting any younger. I recommend that you comply with this ludicrous law to the very letter, for the Gods know – and I say this with the utmost affection, lad – it is highly unlikely that you'll ever find a wife the usual way._

The Malfoys, both father and son, were also among those who wrote to 'commiserate' (commiserate being a loose term for 'gloat'). Draco's letter was comfortably smug in his way, as his marriage to Astoria Greengrass last year had proved timely. His advice was that Severus should look on the bright side of the law –  _there are a few decent looking women in the population, Uncle, absurd as that may sound. Even Granger has tamed her hair, and her face is not unremarkable_ – whilst catering to the assumption that Severus was in want of a wife, the younger, the better; a more outlandish notion than this, Severus had yet to hear.

Lucius, widowed for two years on the day the law was passed, was actually  _angry_. Very little angered Lucius Malfoy, who was an unexpectedly mellow man if you cast aside reactions to the suspicious death of one of his prized peacocks, and his aversion to badly tailored suits. It seemed he was to add 'forced marriage to those of lesser birth' to his list of grievances, which had resulted in him threatening to disembowel the Chief Mugwump whilst also attempting to bribe his way to the best possible match.

 _Since when is the Ministry incorruptible?_ He wrote in his letter.  _A more ridiculous time to discover morality and ethics would be hard to come by._

Severus had no sympathy for his stupendously wealthy friend because he could hardly afford to rig his own match and while Lucius could be generous when the situation arose, he wouldn't stoop to buying Severus a wife.

Feeling impotent, Severus had eventually decided to simply act as though nothing was happening. He went about his everyday life in his cottage, brewing potions to sell by owl-post, experimenting with new variations from the copious notes he'd drawn up over the years, and keeping his extensive potions-garden flourishing, no matter the season. Ireland was the perfect place for him in this way; few neighbours, none of them nosy; a temperate climate that rarely changed; and no pesky memories to assault him when he left the house. He knew nobody, cared for nobody, answered to nobody.

Of course, a year and a half of solitude seemed to be his limit, for all too soon the Ministry hag was back, knocking at his door.

"Professor Snape!" she cried in manufactured delight when he opened the door to glower at her. "Well, aren't you a sight for sore eyes! Bet you didn't expect me back so soon! Lucky for you, you have a most efficient case-worker, yes you do, yes you do!"

She reminded him of a spaniel; dopey but energetic. Two things he absolutely could not stand in a person.

Stemming the urge to slam the door in her face, he instead filled the doorframe to tell her in no uncertain terms that, no, she was not invited in. Behind her stood an Auror who appeared to be half-grizzly bear, with more impressive facial hair than Hagrid and the distinct look of a serial killer. Severus resolved to keep a close eye on him.

"Oh, and this is Auror Eades," she sang, waving the other man forward and patting his shoulder affectionately, an action which only made Eades's face darken further. Severus was quite certain he growled. "He's a big softy, really!" the ministry witch assured him, deludedly.

"Quite," Severus drawled, already being talked over by the official in front of him.

"Lovely weather! Lovely, lovely! You know, some people live in just the most  _awful_ places, but your house is  _lovely_!"

"Yes,  _lovely_ ," Severus cut her off with a wave of his hand. "I'm sorry, Madam- what was it?"

"Freeberry! But please, call me Summer!"

"No." He glared down at her until she shrank back a little, some of the light fading from her eyes. Satisfied, he crossed his arms and asked, in a flat voice, "Madam Freeberry, is there a reason for your visit?"

She appeared startled, looking down at the clipboard she was clutching to a generous but sadly, not gravity defying bosom as though she wasn't quite sure how it got there. "Oh!" she chirped, beaming up at him again with such energy he wanted to smack his head against a wall until she  _fucked off_. "Yes, sir! I've brought your match!"

"My match." he said, the information taking a moment to filter into his brain.

"Oh, yes! And a wonderful one it is, too! My deskmate, Madam Bunting, carried out her initial assessment and she says that this woman is simply the loveliest –" here, she seemed at a loss for words, frantically searching for a substitute to whatever Madam Bunting (and what ridiculous names they all had) had said about his match, and he assumed the word had been unflattering, "- well, she's just  _lovely_."

There she went with that word again. If only they'd taught English at Hogwarts. Perhaps she'd understand what a synonym was. Behind her, Auror Eades let out what sounded suspiciously like a disbelieving laugh masked in a cough. Severus narrowed his eyes on the man, but he simply stared back.

"Who is she?" he asked brusquely.

"Oh, no, no, Professor!" Freeberry tittered, holding up a hand in a 'stop' motion. "We can't just tell you her name! That's no fun!"

"I wasn't aware the law was supposed to be fun," Severus replied without inflection, leading Freeberry to laugh even louder. He stared down at her uptilted face, speculating on how good it would feel to wrap his hands around her exposed throat and throttle her, and whether it would be worth whatever curse Auror Eades decided to cast on him. She really was the most irritating person he'd ever had the misfortune to meet.

She let out a giggle, placing an uninvited hand on his arm in a way that was much too familiar. "You  _are_ funny, Professor! No, it's much more exciting  _our_ way." She snapped her fingers and from her bag drifted a fresh-cut daisy and a sealed envelope. Severus hadn't even realised he'd stepped back until he hit the door jamb.  _No._

You see, it was one thing to be told you were going to marry some nameless, faceless person and know that they had just received the equally disturbing news that they would end the month tied to 'The Greasy Dungeon Bat'; it was quite another to turn up at their house with flowers –  _fucking flowers_  – as though he was some eager lad on his first date.

Then, his brain conjured up the nightmare image of some poor woman opening her door to  _him_ , every sallow, greasy, grumpy inch of him on display as he panted on their doorstep like a desperate –

He pushed that horror away with alacrity, aware from Freeberry's ill-disguised flinch that even the consideration of such a situation had darkened his eyes to an extraordinary extent. He pitied her, and whatever specimen that had sinned to such an extent the Fates decided to pair them with him.

"This is a portkey!" Freeberry yammered on, examining it like it was the most ingenious invention. "The Ministry elves have made  _hundreds_ of them, you know, over the past few days, clever things! It will take us – all of us will come, for safety, you understand – to the doorstep of your new beloved! There, you can share the good news yourself! Isn't that  _romantic_?!"

"No, it is not." Severus snapped, glaring at the flower as though if he tried hard enough he could set it on fire with only his hatred. "It is an asinine idea and whomever concocted it should be subject to dismissal, if not flaying alive, simply for the thought."

Freeberry wilted a little, her mouth twitching into the world's tiniest frown, an expression of displeasure so weak she might as well not have done anything. "That's hardly fair, Professor," she said, her voice chock-full of reproach. Let her be reproachful. She wasn't the one being set up for complete humiliation. "After all, we're only trying to make the situation easier on everybody involved."

"If you'd truly like to make the situation…  _easier_ ," he sneered, "burn that, leave, and never come back."

"Now, Professor!" She spat, stamping her foot in the way of the door as he went to close it. "This impertinence simply will not do!" Suddenly her face transformed, her smile twisting into a horrible scowl as her eyes narrowed and hardened, and she fisted her claws on her hips. "You  _will_ comply, Professor Snape, or I shall have to take you into custody! I understand from your records, sir, that Azkaban did not turn out so well for you the last time!" Even with the exclamatory lilt to her voice, the threat was not disguised. He stopped, his face shuttering as he looked down on the hag, wishing more than anything that he could simply kill her. There were many things he had despised about being a Death Eater, but there was something to be said for living in a culture where one could simply kill off life's little irritants. Indeed, it was likely the only thing that had truly gotten him through two decades of near-slavery at both of his masters' hands.

Though he didn't regret the Dark Lord's defeat, he felt a fleeting sadness now, a mourning for the days gone by.

And then the shame poured in and the familiar drowning cool forced him to relent, marching out of the house and slamming the door shut. It was a quid-pro-quo situation in his mind; he had seriously considered killing her, which meant he had to do something for her to make it up – other than spare her life, as that was a given.

(And people thought he was evil - surely his self-control alone made him a saint.)

"Give me that," he snarled, reaching out and snatching the flower from her hands, and then the world was spinning, there was a jerk behind his navel and he was dropped to the floor in the middle of a forest, bracing his knees for impact. Freeberry and Eades appeared seconds later as he scanned the environment.

Trees. There were a lot of trees. In Ireland his cottage was surrounded by fields with one muggle road twisting up and around it, but here there were barely tracks. The cabin in front of him was situated in a clearing, no fence, and the ground was slightly trampled beneath his feet. The cabin itself was two-floors, small, with only two windows in the front and a door made of a slab of unfinished wood, a rusting handle and lock drilled into its surface. Brick-and-wood made up the walls, and a garden curled around the side and towards the back, where he could recognise the scent of vegetables and some potions ingredients, though not many of the latter.

Overall, it looked delapidated, the chimney stack crumbling to one side as if it might fall at any moment, the bricks eroded by the ivy that crawled up the side of the house and the bushes that grew wild there, though likely not from the wind as the tiny house was protected on all sides by trees. A silver box nestled in on the left of the house, covered by branches and splattered berries. He could feel the thrum of security wards; muggle-repelling, some blood wards, though none that protected the house from people nor animals. He supposed that was because it was so deep in woodland, no muggle or wizard would stumble upon the place.

He could, however, see deep scratch marks in the bark of the trees, the evidence that wild animals most certainly did roam hereabouts, which made it curious that she wouldn't ward them out.

"There, now, isn't this nice!" Freeberry chirped, though the anxious expression on her face as she examined the prevalent claw-marks told another story. She was uncomfortable, which was funny, because Severus felt right at home. She thrust the envelope into his hands and gestured towards the door. "Go on, now! I'm reliably informed that she doesn't bite!"

Eades let out another of his disbelieving snorts.

Severus eyed the house with some trepidation, realising now that he could hear voices from inside. Quiet voices, but they were human, backed by a low buzzing. He strode to the door and knocked twice, backing up a few steps so that he'd get a good view of the inhabitant – and to make it easier to avoid a hex.

The voices stopped abruptly and he realised the buzzing was the sound of electricity, which meant that the silver box was a generator. How odd, he thought, that a pure-blood would live in the woods and yet still use such a muggle convenience.

Footsteps, heavy for a woman, pounded down the hall, pausing for a moment and then continuing to the door. There was the rattle of locks, and then the barrier was thrown open to reveal a smiling blonde who looked vaguely familiar.

Immediately her smile dropped as she took him in with glazed lilac eyes – eyes that triggered a jolt of recognition, and responding nausea in his gut. He'd taught a lot of students, and most of them drifted into one. Especially the blondes; and this one was blonde, with messy hair tied up in a bright green ribbon, hot-pink lipstick, and a puffed-up red monstrosity on her legs, all of which clashed horribly together. Her weight singled her out – usually it was only the Bulstrodes of the pureblood world that had meat to them, the rest of the purebloods too image-conscious to dare break a 26-inch waist, but the Browns had been larger than average for decades, a fact he remembered from his own childhood with the Gryffindor Alice Brown who would be teased mercilessly for being 'fat' despite being 5'4" and weighing no more than 50kg.

Alice Brown didn't have a daughter, of course, but her older brother Anthony did.

And Anthony had had an extremely rare disfigurement that later turned out to be hereditary.

Lavender-purple eyes, for which they had named her.

He realised all of these things in quick succession, just fast enough for him to fully understand who she was and recognize the resulting disgust. This brought him back to the present just in time for her to look him in the eye, with those peculiar eyes hardened, and say, succinctly, "no."

And then she slammed the door.


	3. Wanted: Single Man For Target Practice

Lavender was not a picky woman.

That is to say, she got around.

If she'd known this would be the karmic payback, however, she would have listened to her mother when she'd screamed ' _stop being such a slut you heathen cow!_ ' in her face four years ago.

Because while she didn't have what some girls might call 'high standards', she was never planning to  _marry_ any of the plethora of men she'd slept with over the years. She didn't consider sex a commitment. It was more of a sport. Something fun to do when you're bored on a Sunday, through which you make friends and connections and the like. And while you might experiment with it, break the rules, do whatever you can to win, you never betray your teammates – which, in truth, was really her only rule when it came to sex.

That, and appreciate a good orgasm when it comes because some men just do. Not. Get. It _._

But she never really thought it was a sin, didn't think there was a faceless bearded bloke in the sky just looking for any excuse to damn her for eternity. Her mother worshipped  _Aphrodite_ , for Merlin's sake, so if anyone was to be damned it should be her.

She might have to change her mind on that, now. In fact, she had the wild thought that maybe she should go to confession. Confession was a thing, right? Outside of movies?

Because she must have done something  _really_  bad for this to be her new life, and she wasn't sure cutting class and cursing at her mother would do it.

She wasn't picky, no, but that was when she'd thought she'd get to choose the man she'd marry, if she married at all, and looking at it from that perspective then surely all she was doing was taking them out for a test drive? But choice is no longer a thing that exists and the universe is mocking her for all the poor choices she's made and the ugly, bad men she's fucked by providing her with the ugliest, baddest man available.

Severus fucking Snape.

Wasn't that just a nightmare come to life? It did feel sort of trippy, what with him holding flowers in his hands and she thought, maybe, making an attempt to look harmless. Which was ridiculous, because the last thing Snape was, was harmless.

She was pressed up against the front door as though that might keep them out, struggling to control her breathing. Panic was clawing its way up her throat, threatening to emerge in a scream or something worse, and now she was shaking, and her heart was beating like a jackrabbit. Palpitations? Yep, she had those.

 _Fuck_. She was a strong woman. She could get through this.

And anyway, wasn't he supposed to be dead?

Maybe it was all a horrific wine-induced hallucination. She would wake up and Pansy would be knocking on the door and she'd let her in and together they would laugh about the utter impossibility of the situation.

Though she wasn't entirely convinced her imagination was good enough to cook up something like this.

Outside, she could hear the Ministry Official encouraging Snape to knock again in a painfully perky voice that made her just want to claw at the cow's face until it resembled so much raw meat. Not an especially violent person, if there was anything that could set Lavender off it would be high-pitched noises, people taking her by surprise, and people threatening her Pack.

She hadn't realised until right that moment just how very canine she was. Joy. It was a day of nasty revelations.

There was a -crack- outside the door, and suddenly Pansy's strident tones were cutting across the clearing.

"What in Merlin's – holy fuck, Professor Snape, is that you?"

"Miss Parkinson," Snape drawled, his voice tempered with something Lavender couldn't quite put her finger on. "Do you live here?"

Oh. Oh, no.

As if he thought marrying Pansy was preferable to marrying  _her_?

 _Bastard_.

She swung the door open to observe the scene, scowling ferociously at the lot of them. When her eyes lit on Pansy, the other girl raised a paper bag and a bottle of wine. "We having a party, Lav?" She then raked a sneering gaze over the gathered. "I knew you had no friends, but I didn't realise you'd stooped to  _this_ level of desperation."

Snapping, as Pansy had known she would do, she stomped across the clearing to snatch the bottle of wine from Pansy's hands, pausing only to take a glance in the bag. Spotting chocolate truffles and meat – because she might be an utter bitch but Pansy knew how to treat a girl right – she shackled Pansy's wrist with her other hand and towed her across the clearing, slamming the door on the Ministry witch's plaintive call of "Miss Brown, I really must insist you speak with-".

"Am I dreaming?" Pansy asked, following Lavender through to the kitchen, where she proceeded to slosh copious amounts of wine into glasses. "Was that Snape?"

"You saw him too," Lavender said by way of reply, now hunting through the bag of supplies Pansy gave her. "Shit. Guess I'm not hallucinating." Pulling out a box of chocolate truffles and tearing off the lid in the same movement, she grabbed her wineglass, chocolates, and the rest of the bag in her teeth and meandered through to the living room, where she dumped herself on the couch and pressed 'play' on her film.

"Why is he here?" Pansy demanded, rounding the end table to shoot Lavender a curious look. In answer, Lavender reached a hand into the bag at her elbow and tossed the first thing that came to hand at her best friend. From the thunking noise, she thought it might have been something dense.

"Does this mean we're not talking about it?" Pansy asked, appearing again in Lavender's eyesight, holding a joint of lamb in one hand and rubbing her forehead with the other. "That's a really fucking stupid idea. What's our strategy?"

"You want to know what my strategy is, Pansy?" Lavender mumbled through a mouthful of sweet, poking at the screen. "Him. Paul Rudd. Also, Richard Gere, Pierce Brosnan, Brad Pitt…" She shifted slightly onto her side so that her head was snuggled on a pillow and her legs were pressed right against the back of the couch, in easy reach of her wine but with plenty of room for Pansy. "Denzel Washington."

Rolling her eyes, Pansy produced a tub of ice-cream and a spoon, throwing herself beside Lavender and leaning sideways to snuggle her head against Lavender's shoulder as she turned to the film. "I don't know what the fuck any of that means," she said, "but, you know. We're friends, so I'm in. I just want my protest on the record."

"Duly noted," Lavender said, not taking her eyes off the screen.

He was not waiting out here all night.

He told as much to Freeberry, to which she frowned, shuffled her feet, and looked towards the cottage. "I'm afraid we cannot leave until we've handed her the letter," Freeberry admitted with a grimace.

"We can't put it through the post box?" Snape asked with a raised eyebrow.

"No," Freeberry said, then lifted her chin in defiance as he narrowed his eyes. "It is the only way to magically provoke a bond!"

"So this is entrapment?" He asked in a dangerous voice.

"No. This, Professor, is the  _law_." She huffed, marched over to the cottage and banged loudly on the single ground-floor window. In response, the volume on the television inside was raised, so that Snape could hear every word of the insipid romance film they were watching.

"Very clever, Madam Freeberry. What now? Do you plan to arrest her?" He gestured towards Eades with a sardonic look on his face. "Arrest me, perhaps, for not complying because my lovely wife-to-be refuses to open her door?"

"We can't arrest her until she's taken the envelope," Freeberry gritted out. "And we can't give her that unless she comes outside." She hammered on the window again, the racket going ignored by the two inhabitants.

"You're trying to tell me that you didn't see this coming," Severus said slowly, watching her scramble around the house desperately with a fair amount of incredulity.

Freeberry huffed exasperatedly, her face purple. "No! I don't understand it! You'd think people would be happy we're bringing their soulmates to their door! I've performed three matches already and all of  _them_ went well!" She shot a scathing look at him. "I should have known this would be difficult!"

He tried not to feel offended. He managed it quite well.

There was another -crack- and Remus Lupin was stood in front of the door. Sensing their presence, he turned slowly around, his eyes flaring wide when he took in Severus and his companions. "Err- hello?"

"Mister Lupin, isn't it?" Freeberry asked with a bright smile. "Registered Alpha, packmate to Lavender Brown, yes?"

"Is she in trouble?" Lupin asked, his voice lowering to a growl as he straightened himself up. Ah, yes. Of course he'd choose to fight. How very like him.

"Oh, no! Not yet, anyway. We're here to provide her with her Ministry mandated spouse, you see?" she waved a hand at Severus like he was some prize on a game show. He met Lupin's eyes, letting him see how very much he did not want to be there.

Lupin let out a choked noise, dark amusement flickering across his face. " _You're_ Lavender's soul-mate?" he asked incredulously. Then he started chuckling, and once he started he just couldn't seem to stop. He bent in two, clutching at his abdomen as they ripped through him, filling the air with his wry delight. "Oh, Merlin," he laughed, "I'm going to look forward to watching this."

"I'm quite sure there has been a mistake," Severus snarled at Freeberry, who seemed to be taking Lupin's laughter as a personal compliment, beaming at him in adoration. "Lavender Brown and I cannot be compatible. On any level."

"Oh, I don't know, Severus," Lupin snorted, "I can see it."

"Nobody asked you, wolf." Severus snarled.

"Now, now, there's no need for all of this rudeness!" Freeberry chirped, stepping between the two of them. "Mr Lupin-"

" _Master_ Lupin," Lupin corrected, turning cold eyes on Freeberry. Severus was impressed. Not that he was a Master – that was only to be expected, what with Shacklebolt changing the werewolf laws almost the second he stepped into office so that werewolves could get an education (but still no job) – but that he had the guts to stand up to a Ministry official in that way. He'd always appeared rather spineless to Severus.

" _Master_ Lupin, then," Freeberry chirped, refusing to get ruffled. "Perhaps you could bring Miss Brown outside so that we can complete our business?"

"I'm afraid not," Lupin said with all appearance of regret.

Freeberry blinked, visibly taken aback. "You're – what?" she echoed.

"I'll not bring her outside so that you can arrest her, no," Lupin said kindly. "I will, however, take Severus in, if he's amenable to that?"

Severus paused, almost balking at the thought. What game was he playing? Miss Brown had been no more happy to see him than he had her, and for good reason, and now Lupin was offering to take him into her house without an invitation? "She will kill you," he warned Lupin. "She is not best pleased with her match."

Lupin grinned slightly. "Lavender isn't best pleased with much of anything, nowadays. She won't kill me, though. She loves me."

That he said it so simply, so matter-of-factly, made Severus want to punch him. Not out of jealousy, no, but if a man is to be forced to marry a woman he doesn't like nor have any particular interest in, he should not be subjected to their paramours, either. There was no greater insult.

"I'll take you in, and you two can talk," Lupin continued, bringing a key from his pocket and shaking it in the air. "Come on."

Not wanting to be chivvied about like a truculent child, Severus strode over the clearing, careful to keep a leisurely, insolent pace. Lupin rolled his eyes, but unlocked the door, pushing it open and standing aside to let Severus precede him. He kept a golden gimlet eye on the Ministry Officials behind them, and the second he was inside, he slammed the door and locked it.

"Remus?" a voice floated out of a room around the corner. Remus set off towards it, beckoning that Severus should follow. "Is that you?"

"It's me!" he called back, flashing a mischievous smile at Severus before he disappeared around the corner. Severus followed, only to stop dead when he found himself in The Room Where Taste Went To Die.

The walls were smeared with colour, so thick in some places that it created a mountain on the flat surface. The ceiling was not unaffected, with dribbles of colour marring its surface where, presumably, someone had thrown paint around willy-nilly. The floor, thankfully, was unpainted, untreated wood, but the rug that covered it was in a blinding Calpol pink. The curtains were lime green, the couches deep purple, the mantel painted yellow. The only saving grace of the room was that all of the furniture appeared to be made from the same dull, unpolished wood as the floor, and none of it had been painted. Severus grimaced again, the thought that the two of them had been deemed compatible by the government even more ludicrous as he stood in a room that, at best, appeared to be an artistic representation of her mental breakdown.

Lupin, still smirking, was settling himself on the couch opposite the occupied one after having brushed kisses against each of the girls' heads. They were distracted by Lupin's appearance, which gave Severus the time to observe his betrothed without being observed himself.

She was comely, he supposed, if you disregarded the scars. Four long furrows, not at all neat, sliced from her hairline down her face, to a clump of scar-tissue at her neck where no singular mark was distinguishable from the mess. On the right of her head, the scarring prevented hair growth just behind her temples, the scars leaving four distinct bald streaks across her scalp. Rather than hiding this, however, Miss Brown had sectioned the remaining hair and braided it close to her scalp, leaving five thin, tight braids to travel down behind her ear to curve under the rest of her hair along the base of her scalp, the ends neatly folded in on themselves so that no hair was visible. He was willing to bet she never removed them, they appeared so natural on her head, not so much disguising her fault as drawing attention to it unapologetically. He could respect her for the courage that took, even while admitting that she was not at all his type.

Miss Parkinson – perfectly coiffed, acid tongued, bad tempered – was also very much not his type, but it had been automatic to prefer her as an option over her friend. Miss Parkinson was at least a Slytherin, and he felt perhaps they might have something in common, and he would rather like a girl with her territorial trait devoted to him.

"You're in my  _house_ and  _still_ staring at Pansy?!" a loud voice demanded, and he realised that his presence had at last been noted. Miss Brown had turned her head, glaring at him over the top of her couch. "My  _Gods_ , didn't your mother teach you any manners?! What are you even doing here? How did you even get in?!" Her head whipped around to stare at a falsely-abashed looking Lupin, to whom she growled, " _you._ "

"Severus is here to talk over your match," Lupin said in a calm voice.

"Well, too bad," she sniffed, shooting him a dismissive look. "I'm busy."

"Busy," Severus sneered. "Hardly."

She turned around, shooting him a venomous look. "Excuse you! Can't you see I'm trying to eat my feelings?"

"I think everybody can see that," Severus drawled, his eyes wandering to the chocolates she held possessively in her hands.

"Did you just call me  _fat_?" Miss Brown seethed, her purple eyes alight with fury.

"You're in for it now," Miss Parkinson told him gleefully, throwing herself into the seat next to Lupin and  _actually summoning popcorn from the kitchen_. She tossed a few kernels into her mouth and watched the two of them square off with heady anticipation.

"No, I did not," Severus replied smoothly. "Gluttonous, perhaps…"

" _You git!"_ Miss Brown shrieked, and before Severus had a chance to react she'd scooped up a candle from the table and launched it at him, the projectile smacking him in the shoulder with unexpected force, sending him staggering back. "Get out of my house!"

"No," he said for no other reason than to antagonise her. "We must talk."

"I don't want to talk to you," she sneered equally as well as he did, he noticed. "We are not getting married. I'll find someone else."

"There  _is_  nobody else, stupid girl," he snapped. "Do you not think I've searched for another solution?"

"Why should you?" she retorted, her magic sparking along her arms. So little control, he tsked in his head. "This way, you get a young, hot wife stuck with you for the rest of your sorry life!"

He gaped, her response flummoxing him. Pulling himself together, another wave of knife-edged bitterness swept over him, and he spat; "Don't flatter yourself, Miss Brown, I tend not to like my women furry."

Miss Brown growled lowly. "And I prefer my men  _clean_ , so it appears we're at an impasse!"

Silence fell, except for the sound of Miss Parkinson's satisfied chewing and the crinkling of the microwave bag as she scooped out another handful. Miss Brown was leaning over the back of the sofa on her elbows, her eyes spitting fire. Severus was towering over her, his own anger matching hers. The moment felt like a turning point. If he continued along this vein, then one of them would most certainly end up dead. If he backed off, she would see it as weakness, and strike.

This was the problem when negotiating with people half-ruled by wild animals.

He fisted his hands, startling at the sound of paper crunching in them. Glancing down, he saw the envelope neatly addressed with Miss Brown's name. He glanced up at her – his future wife, if the Ministry had any say about it.

"We must fight this," he told her, holding out the envelope so that she could see it. "We cannot be made to marry."

Miss Brown eyed the envelope suspiciously. "I don't know, Snape. Maybe we'll get really lucky, and you'll just drop dead. Problem solved, without any messy politics."

He closed his mouth with a  _clack_ , gritting his teeth so that he didn't respond. "Fine, then.  _I_ will be fighting it. But I cannot do it from Azkaban. Take the letter, Miss Brown."

She glared at him with pure hate, snatching it from him. The bright gold flash that filled the room left starbursts dancing behind his eyelids, but he ignored it, instead turning on his heel and leaving without another word.

When he stepped outside, it was to face a triumphant looking Freeberry, and a disappointed Eades.

"Well done, Professor!" Freeberry sang. "Very well done, indeed!"

He favoured her with a snarl, span on the spot and apparated home.

 


	4. Why Are We Friends With These People

"So."

"So."

Lavender, Remus and Pansy all stared at one another across the living room, the opened Ministry letter sitting between them like a giant pink elephant. Probably juggling.

"That was most unexpected," Remus observed, his eyes flicking to where Severus had stood moments before. Lavender shot him a dark look, unwilling to forgive his utter betrayal. Weren't dogs supposed to be loyal? Lavender was! Pansy was! Where did Remus fall off the cart?

"Highly entertaining, though," Pansy smirked, curling her tongue around the spoon she'd just used to dump ice-cream on her popcorn, much to the disgust of all those assembled. "You two have so much  _chemistry_ ," she tittered, digging into the bag for a dairy-smothered kernel.

"Were you dropped on your head as a child?" Lavender snapped in her direction.

"Well, my mother wasn't exactly  _careful_ , if that's what you mean," Pansy said, tapping her spoon against her bottom lip. "I don't see how that relates to this situation, though. My mental problems are for  _my_ future husband to deal with, not yours."

"I don't see why," Remus said quietly, his hand creeping out to snatch a handful of Lavender's truffles away and hide them in his pocket. She pretended not to notice, because he might be her Alpha, but he was also  _so friggin' cute_ that it was almost worth having to put up with his cocoa-themed kleptomania just to get that fuzzy feeling inside whenever he shook his hair out of his eyes or scratched his nose or blinked slowly, and she just wanted to go  _awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!_  and ruffle his hair. "We have to put up with it, why not Snape?" he muttered, then slipped a truffle in his mouth and blinked at Lavender with exaggerated innocence.

"Excuse me, Lupin, but who was it who asked me to join the Pack?" Pansy asked, stabbing the air with a spoon. "Who was it who  _grovelled_ – yes,  _grovelled!_  – on their knees for me to come to this godforsaken house and keep your murder dog company?"

"I'm a  _werewolf_ ," Lavender sniffed in affront, scowling at Pansy. "You're the dog."

"I'm a  _jackal_ ," Pansy replied with the same emphasis. "Not a dog."

"Demon dog," Lavender hissed, and Pansy rolled her eyes. "Scavenger!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. So I don't like to kill my own food. Big deal. In the  _human_ world, that's, like, civilised." She shrugged and dug deep in her bag of popcorn, then said through a mouthful of creamy half-masticated carbohydrate, "don't really need to with two murder dogs around, anyway, do I?"

"I do object to the wording," Remus said, but he didn't involve himself further. He knew better, after two years of trying to manage the both of them. Lavender thought he probably let Snape in in the hopes that he might be able to manage Lavender, half his stress a bit.

He loved them, though. That was important. They all loved each other like a family, so they could freely hate each other without any of those pesky abandonment issues they all suffered from coming to the fore. (Except Pansy. Pansy got separation anxiety, and it would be  _fucking hilarious_ if it wasn't so sad _.)_

"What's wrong with 'murder dog'?" Pansy asked with deliberate inanity. "It's accurate."

"So's demon dog but you don't like that, now, do you?" Remus reasoned, and Pansy stuck her tongue out at him but fell silent. Remus then turned to Lavender and raised an eyebrow. "Would you like to explain exactly what happened there?"

"Well Pansy-"

" _Not_ with Pansy," he said sternly, his eyes turning disappointed. Lavender winced. She hated when he went all disappointed on her. It was like she'd kicked a puppy. A lethal puppy, but still a puppy.

"I just don't like him," she whined, kicking her legs in the air like a child. "He's old and weird."

"He's the same age as me," Remus said.

"You're  _old_ ," Lavender told him, and Pansy snorted. "I don't care what anybody tells you, forty is not the new twenty."

"Darn," Remus said dryly. "Guess that's a no to the raves, then. Well, there's my weekend plans down the drain." Sobering, he leaned his elbows on his knees and looked at her closely. "That's not it, is it?"

"I…" Lavender scowled. "I don't want to talk about it."

"There's a change," Pansy muttered, ducking nimbly to a side to dodge the flying television remote.

"I'm going to bed," Lavender announced, standing and heading for the door. "Make sure you clean the place when you're done, damn scavengers!"

Even in her room, wrapped in blankets and snuggled in bed, she could hear the low murmur of their voices from her living room. They didn't leave. She liked that.

* * *

Severus, the next morning, found himself in the company foyer of Malfoy Manor, wondering at his choices of company. He'd slipped seamlessly from the world's most tasteless room to the world's most garish, and he was unsure which was worse. Surely 24-carat gilding had gone out of style centuries back?

What was wrong with a muted colour scheme, really?

He scowled at the walls, the floors, the absurdly fancy tables and chairs, and the marble fireplace.  _Marble fireplace_. Why was he friends with these people?

Lucius had been his closest friend since school, but that didn't mean Severus was blind to his faults. In fact, most days, it meant they were all the more glaring. Especially this morning, as he attempted to make himself comfortable on a chair whose legs appeared to be crafted from matchsticks, the cushion of which, while pretty, provided but the least possible amount of protection for his arse. An elf had shown him in, letting him know that Lucius was on a floo-call but would be with him shortly. Shortly was running out, as was Severus's patience.

"Ah, Severus," Lucius's velvet voice drifted in as the man himself crossed the threshold of the room, a smile playing on his lips. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" He paused to click his fingers, at which another, different elf appeared. "Drinks," he ordered the elf, and it flickered back out of the room immediately. Lucius raised his silver eyes to contemplate Severus again. "Well?"

"Lavender Brown," Severus said shortly. "What do you know of her?"

Lucius shrugged fluidly, dropping himself into another spindly chair and spreading his legs out in front of him languidly, resting his cane against the arm. "Very little, I assure you. You'd be better off asking Draco. They did go to school together, after all."

"Is he available?" Severus asked, trying not to show his irritation. Lucius was in a playful mood, he could tell by the twinkle in his eye. Lucius in a playful mood was nigh on unbearable.

"Oh, I'm sure he's around somewhere," he replied in an airy voice, waving a hand in the air. The elf reappeared with a carafe of coffee and a tray of pastries. Lucius narrowed his eyes at the tiny creature. "What is this?"

The elf jumped, turning its lamp-eyes on Lucius. "Breakfast?" It squeaked nervously.

"I asked for  _drinks_ ," Lucius sighed gustily. " _Alcohol,_ Mimsy. Do you know what that is?"

"Yes, Master, Mipsy knows."

"Then where is it? No – don't tell me, just bring it through. And, Mimsy?"

"Yes, sir?"

Lucius frowned. "Please tell Draco his presence is requested."

Mipsy – or Mimsy, whatever her name was – bowed low and disappeared again. Lucius grunted. "Bloody things have been useless since Cissy passed." He sighed, laying a hand over his brow dramatically. "Ah, you can't possibly understand how difficult running an estate of this size is alone, Severus. At least, if this blasted Law will be good for anything, it will bring me some assistance." He paused, tilted his head. "And maybe some eye-candy. That is what the youngsters call it, these days, isn't it?"

Severus rather doubted, given the results of his own so-called 'Soul-Mate Test', that Lucius would be provided with the sort-of wife he desired. However, it wasn't his job to burst the man's bubble, so he'd keep his own counsel and simply endeavour to be around when his world view was shattered. That sounded like it might be entertaining enough to distract him from his own troubles, at least for a few hours.

"Now, Severus, why are you asking about young Miss Brown?" Lucius leered at him from across the room. "Lining up your mistresses already? Smart man."

"Have you even read the law, Lucius?" Severus asked in a bored voice. "Fertility spells, Fidelity spells."

A look of horror crossed Lucius's aristocratic features. "No… mistresses?"

"None," he allowed himself an evil smile as the news sank in. "It's not looking so very desirable now, is it?"

Stunned, Lucius simply stared off into the distance, a glassy look on his face. No doubt envisaging a future without a whole harem of mistresses at his disposal. For a man like Lucius, that must look rather bleak. Even Draco's entrance didn't bestir him from his daze.

"Father?" Draco shot a look at Severus, rather resigned. "Uncle Severus. Why is it this only happens when you're around?"

"He's getting old, Draco," Severus mocked with only a little malicious glee. "These things happen when a man passes his prime."

"Malfoys do not 'pass their prime'," Draco said snottily, because despite the significant amount of loosening up he'd done over the post-war years, some things were simply too ingrained to change. "We age gracefully after a significant number of years have passed – certainly more than  _forty-six_."

"As you say," Severus taunted in an even tone, "but how else can you explain this?"

"Shock," Lucius's voice butted in as he came back to himself. He glanced up at Draco, apparently shocked to see him there. "Oh, hello, son."

"Father," Draco nodded. "You called?"

"Severus wishes to know about Lavender Brown."

Draco's eyebrows rose as he turned to look at Severus with contemplative eyes. "Lavender Brown?" He mused. "The blonde Gryffindor with the odd eyes?" Severus opened his mouth to respond, but Draco simply went on. "Yes, I remember her. Nice girl." He smiled dreamily, gazing off into the middle distance. "Truly impressive… she does this thing with her tongue-"

"Draco." Severus snapped. "I'll thank you to stop right there."

Rolling his eyes, Draco shut up momentarily. After a few seconds though, showing his youthful impetuousness, he asked, "Why do you want to know?"

"The Ministry has seen fit to match me with young Miss Brown, and I would like to be prepared before my wedding." There, he'd said it. It felt like ashes in his mouth, and the idea made him shudder with disgust, but he'd admitted to the truth. That felt like maturity, and progress.

" _Really_?" Draco looked stunned. "But nobody's really seen Brown since graduation. She's as much of a hermit as you, Uncle. I'd almost forgotten she existed."

Severus narrowed his eyes on his godson. "Really?" he asked, drawing out the word. "And yet I saw your friend Miss Parkinson there just yesterday."

Draco blushed, his eyes flickering away. "Okay, so I knew she existed. Pansy's protective of her, though. I haven't  _seen_ her in months, maybe years."

"I had the feeling she received plenty of visitors," Severus asked.

"Only over the past few months," Draco admitted. "She's a hermit, but she's a better source of gossip than Skeeter, and most of it's true."

"It is my understanding," Lucius interjected, "that your betrothed does a brisk trade in secrets."

Severus thought about that for a moment. The implications. "She must be cleverer than she looks," was his response, to which Lucius sent him a wry look, stroking his treasured blonde locks smugly.

"Aren't we all, Severus, aren't we all."

* * *

"Severus Snape is a good catch," Dahlia Brown nee Twittle hummed approvingly over a cup of dishwater-flavour swill, her beady eyes focused on her daughter. Her disappointment of a daughter, who had never been exactly what she'd wanted her to be, and then, to add insult to injury, had gone and become a werewolf, ruining any chance of a good marriage.

That was how she phrased it, too. As though her lycanthropy was something Lavender had done purposefully, to spite her mother; some meaningless teenage rebellion like dying her hair or sleeping with a lot of boys except this one was big, bad, and irrevocable. When her father had broken the news to lovely, maternal Dahlia, her response had been 'well, at least nobody knows'.

Both trite and untruthful, as it turns out.

Beside her, Poppy Twittle, nee Rosier, aunt to both Lavender and Pansy and Dahlia's sister-in-law, hummed approvingly. Her jowls quivered with the movement, slapping together beneath her chin. "A war hero," she said with awe in her voice.

"I'm a war hero," Lavender reminded them petulantly, because whenever she was around the females of her family she regressed into her five-year-old self. Both older women gave her pitying looks.

"Order of Merlin;  _Third Class_ ," Dahlia drawled, an eyebrow cocked significantly. "Hardly anything to boast about, dear. They're ten-a-penny nowadays."

 _Well then where's yours?_ Lavender  _did not_ say, because she wasn't going to get dragged into this argument again.

"How on earth did you manage it?" Poppy asked, her voice snide with a touch of curious admiration. "Rigging the tests? You did rig the tests, didn't you?"

A snigger came from the fourth of their group, the unimpressive Thistle Twittle, Poppy's daughter and all around bane of Lavender's existence. She was two years younger than Lavender, best friend to Astoria Malfoy nee Greengrass, and had a betrothal contract to Blaise Zabini since birth, the two of them being the minor purebloods that they were. Lavender couldn't help but hope that Zabini turned out to have the same marital habits as his mother – that is to say, murdering his wives. Thistle could do with a good stabbing.

A Slytherin because there was nowhere else to put her, Thistle, in the grand tradition of most pureblooded families, was not, in fact, a pureblood. The Twittle family gained its name through marriage – the marriage of Cordelia Avery to the muggle David Twittle in the late thirties. They birthed three half-blood children; two girls and a boy, all of whom, apparently to spite those that would disown them for their 'murky bloodlines', went on to marry good pureblood stock. The muggle origins of their House were roundly forgotten in the light of such advantageous connections, but Lavender knew.

Lavender remembered because that made she herself a half-blood, or, at the very most, a seven-eighths-blood. And so it was that whenever Dahlia had instructed her on how a 'proper pureblooded lady' should act, Lavender would respond with a) 'how the hell would you know?' (being only a three-quarter-blood as she was) and b) 'I'm not pureblooded anyway so what does it matter?'.

Dahlia came to regret forcing Lavender to study the lineages of every pureblooded family in the country. Lavender took a perverse pleasure in making her mother regret things. Like, for instance, having a child.

"You shan't scare him away, will you, Lavender?" Dahlia asked, squinting at her slightly. She was going blind, but nobody mentioned it, because she refused to wear glasses or undertake corrective therapy. 'I have a reputation to protect, darling!' she'd gasped at Lavender's father when he'd mentioned the concept. Now, she appealed to her daughter, "I know how you get, but you musn't. You really musn't."

"I don't think even I can be an unappealing enough concept that a man would choose Azkaban over me," Lavender replied stiffly, ignoring their dubious looks.

"That's not what I heard," Thistle twittered, holding her teacup between two fingers while her pinkie stuck out so far that Lavender thought it might have been dislocated. Poor Thistle, Lavender might think if the girl wasn't such a cow. She'd taken Poppy Twittle's lessons to heart in her youth, but it hadn't stopped her being awful. "I heard from Astoria, who heard it from Draco, who heard it from Lucius -" everybody winced when she said his name. Referring to Lord Malfoy by his forename though never having been given permission was grounds for social excommunication. And despite Thistle's closeness to Astoria, the whole world knew the elder Malfoy would rather gouge his eyes out with sub-par cutlery than spend time with Thistle Twittle. You could say many things about Lucius Malfoy, but he was never one to suffer fools gladly.

"-that he's doing  _everything_ he can to escape your marriage! Draco told Astoria who told me that Severus was disgusted by your appearance, your lifestyle, and most of all your wandering eye!"

She grinned with evil satisfaction as Dahlia went into a flurry of disapproving clucks. "I told you, Lavender! I told you your promiscuity would come back to haunt you! No man will buy the spider if the silk's free!"

Lavender rolled her eyes at that complete butchering of that faux-proverb. "There are so many things wrong with that statement, I don't know where to begin."

"Oh, Lavender!" Dahlia gasped, going full Mrs. Bennett with a hand thrown over her forehead as she 'swooned' into the back of her couch. "When will you understand that when you shame yourself, you shame all of us?"

There was a snort from a chair a few feet away, and Lavender made eye contact with old Grandma Brown, glancing away quickly as the urge to laugh with her poured over her. Grandma Brown, her father's mother, hated these gatherings, but was forced to put up with them as Dahlia insisted on having them at her house – being so grand as it was, the centre of the Brown House. A bit of a loner, Grandma Brown didn't like to go out into public, instead receiving visitors at home; not that there were many of them, nowadays. Lavender came by with some frequency; not as much as she'd like, but often enough – she loved her Grandma with the same fierce protectiveness with which she loved her father, and would spend more time with both if she could. As it was, Lavender knew it was painful for her Grandma to spend too much time with her, what with her looking so much like her Aunt, who still resided in St. Mungo's on a permanent basis. If it hadn't been for the fact that her other grandchild saw so little of her, Lavender would give her a break from her presence just to spare her pain.

Despite all of this, however, Lavender and her Grandmother had similar personalities (family lore claimed that the first time she'd met Frank Longbottom as a prospective son-in-law, she'd plucked at his hair and demanded "why on earth are you marrying a blonde, Alice? For goodness sakes, where is your pride?") and as such, they got along very well. It helped that Grandma Brown observed Dahlia Brown with a sort of fascinated horror, as though she was wondering exactly where she had gone so wrong as to raise a child who could adore this woman. Granted, she had raised both of her children, and later Lavender, to be the sort of people who could appreciate what she called 'backbone' in their partners, even if it was displayed as meanness or, in Lavender's case, sheer bitchiness (Frank Longbottom had replied with "Better blonde than grey," with a pointed look at Grandma's prematurely silvered hair. Grandma Brown especially liked retelling that part of the story). The part her father missed, however, was that these mean, bitchy people should also have good hearts.

"Are you alright, Mama?" Dahlia asked now, without much concern, as she scooped more sugar into her tea. "Do you need to go to bed?"

"I'm old, not infirm," Grandma Brown told her daughter-in-law firmly, then snapped, "and don't call me that insipid name. You're nearing fifty, have the good sense to act like it."

"Yes, yes, mama," Dahlia said loudly and slowly, shooting the Twittles a humourous look. "She thinks she can still do everything she used to," she told them in a tone of manufactured, sickly pity. "Bless her. You mustn't over-extend yourself, Mama!"

Seeing the storm-cloud cross Grandma Brown's face, Lavender hopped to her feet, almost spilling her tea with the abrupt movement. Dahlia and Poppy sent her scolding looks, but she ignored them. "I know, Grandma, why don't we take a turn around the gardens? You can show me where you planted Neville's cuttings."

Her Grandma's face lit up, like it always did when reminded of the little gifts her other grandchild sent her every now and again. She treasured them inordinately, considering he never visited, having been inoculated against her since childhood by Augusta Longbottom. The two of them had a long-standing feud going over an insult Grandma had paid her in their childhood, and now Augusta referred to her as 'that old battleaxe', which Lavender thought hypocritical, but vastly more pleasant than Grandma Brown's nickname for  _her_ , which included several swearwords one would never expect to leave an old lady's lips, and one which Lavender  _herself_ never dared use, it was so offensive. She did, however, steal Grandma Brown's first love – the late Lord Longbottom – and so Lavender never corrected her.

Grandma Brown, like Augusta, still had full use of her faculties, and led Lavender around the garden under the swift power of her own two legs. Once they were far enough from the orangery where the other women gathered, Grandma Brown let out a relieved sigh and sank down into the grass. "That  _woman_!" she snarled, glancing back at the distant house. "How you put up with her, I don't know."

"Why do you think I live in the forest?" Lavender asked drily, dropping down next to her and spreading her legs out, enjoying the feel of the soft daisies against her bare legs. "It's not for the company."

"I wouldn't blame you if it was," Grandma Brown sniffed. "They're enough to put anyone off the human race as a whole. Now, dear, tell me." She turned her head, the sunlight bleaching her tresses pure white, to peer at Lavender. "This Snape fellow. What's he like?"

Lavender tensed automatically, but couldn't deny her anything. "Tall," she said, deciding to keep to the minor details. "Clever, I think. He's a terribly skilled Potions Master. A Slytherin."

Grandma Brown nodded thoughtfully. "And of his person?"

"Abrasive," Lavender blurted, then winced when Grandma Brown shot her a wry look. "Yes, I know. But he's different. Cruel and insulting and… and…" she petered off, thinking hard. "Well, I don't know him that well, really, but isn't what I do know enough?"

"Not hardly. Not when marriage is the matter at hand," her grandmother said wisely, plucking some of the flowers from the ground and braiding them with nimble fingers. "Take it from one who knows, dearest. These might be projected traits. Of course, you believe they are real, and I think, knowing what I do of the infamous 'Professor Snape' - mostly from the  _Prophet_ , mind you – I agree. But there is more." She reached over to drape the flower crown over Lavender's curls and drew her hand down to tap at the braids Lavender had had a nurse do shortly after the Battle, and had never removed. "There is always more, sweet girl."

Lavender sighed, tipping up her face to the sun gently, breathing in the smell from her circlet and trying to sort through her muddled thoughts. "It's not just his personality I find objectionable," she drew out slowly, still unsure of where she was going with this. "Of course, if it were up to me, I wouldn't marry at all, but if I am to marry, I'd like there to be love involved." She squinted across at her grandmother. "Well, as much as anybody could love  _me_ , anyway."

She flinched back when Grandma Brown slapped her arm in chastisement. "I'll hear no more of that talk, thank you. You're perfectly loveable. Your wolf friend and the Parkinson chit love you, don't they?"

"Special circumstances," Lavender said dryly, feeling better just for the mention of her packmates. She twisted over onto her stomach, unaware of how the flowers seemed to part for her passage, and how she held her weight up so as not to crush them needlessly. Her grandmother noticed, though, smiling approvingly at the union between the earth and her favoured daughter. "And I'm sure that with any other man, given enough time and exposure, they'd come to love me and I'd love them. But with Snape…"

"Ah," Grandmother Brown nodded knowingly. "The dead muggleborn. What was her name again?"

"Lily Evans-Potter," Lavender informed her. "You've met her. Hundreds of times. She stayed here for three summers when she was at school. Don't pretend on my account, Grandma."

Grandma Brown scoffed. "Alice had lots of friends, as did your father. I can't be expected to remember every one of them. She wasn't all that special – beautiful, yes, but I was a happily married woman and not inclined to such desires. Intelligent, too. But she didn't have the Brown spirit, so I simply cannot understand how she had all of the men slobbering all over her while our Alice went unnoticed. Such is the core fault of men, I suppose, to be led around by their hormones while we women are the thinkers of the lot. If they didn't have brute strength over us, I'm sure…"

Lavender let the comforting sound of her Grandmother's voice fade into the background. She often went on rants like this, on the injustice of the world for their family, their Alice, and women as a whole. She was highly political, and had bred the same into her children and everybody else she could reach – one memorable summer, after reading the entire works of Simone de Beauvoir, she even set up a Feminist Existentialism Society for Modern Witches with whom she still corresponded; the ranks of which included the likes of Griselda Marchbanks and Minerva McGonagall (who was the baby of the bunch, which provided endless entertainment for Lavender – there was an  _entire society_ of pureblood women who still, to this day, referred to the terribly intimidating Professor McGonagall, Headmistress of Hogwarts' School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, as 'Baby Minnie'.

Lavender had not yet considered that her problems with this whole marriage farce went beyond her fierce protection of her own life and her general distaste for Snape, but her answer to her Grandmother suggested otherwise. She knew with absolute certainty that she wasn't attracted to Snape, hadn't been nursing a burning passion for him these past ten years, and definitely didn't love him. She should have been happy with that, except that her exploration of her own thoughts showed that she wasn't as opposed to the union as she should have been. Instead of a solid steel wall of revulsion and righteous fury between her and Snape, she found a wavering wall of self-depreciation and vulnerability, laced with insecurity.

Huh. She'd wondered where that had gone.

She knew, with the certainty that had always surrounded her seductions, that with enough time and energy what she had said to her grandmother would be true – she could make any man fall in love with her, and in the doing, she would fall too. They would be happy, because in reality a man and a woman who spend enough time together and show enough soul will likely end up shagging.

Any  _other_ man. For Snape would not fall; he was distant, stoic, and staunchly in love with someone else. Worse, a dead girl. And one of the most solid truths of anybody's life was that you could never, in life, hope to measure up to someone's memory of the dead.

This was why she hadn't wanted to get involved, she knew now. The siren song that was her memories of other happy marriages was not enough to entice her into risking her heart – the only part of her that had survived Greyback's attack untouched, whole and pure.

Uncomfortable with all of this introspection, as she was a Gryffindor and therefore not particularly used to the examination of her own person, she locked the thoughts away for as long as they would stay out and instead suggested wine to her Grandma, who agreed readily. Good. Getting good and blathered would probably help.


	5. Wolves With Opposable Thumbs: Please Do Not Bring Weapons Into The Enclosure

Severus eventually had to leave after another Ministry official appeared at the door, demanding to see Lucius. This one had been a skeletal man, about five-four, with sunken cheeks and tiny, beady eyes. Lucius had greeted him with cold formality, which, for Lucius, was practically a murder attempt these days, the hatred was so strong. Even when he came across Arthur Weasley in the Ministry halls he would nod nowadays, or say a quick hello. It didn't help that he was accompanied by Auror Fitzpatrick, who had originally arrested Lucius at the Department of Mysteries. And here, Severus had been sure they were taunting  _him_  unnecessarily. Poor Lucius got a much worse end of the stick.

No guilt welled up inside him at the idea of leaving Lucius to his fate; a supercilious, smirking Draco his only support. Severus had other things to be concerned about, the least of which being his future bride. He spared a thought to wonder how she was taking the news – whether she'd decided to face up to it as yet or whether she still had her head buried firmly in the sand. He would bet on her continued denial, but perhaps she would surprise him. There must be some redeeming quality within her, after all, if she had been chosen as his match.

Nevertheless, she was relegated to the bottom of his list of priorities, ostensibly because immersing himself in the budding revolution was more important. His honest reasoning, however, was that he simply could not be bothered to face her right then. She was determined to be difficult, but there was no need for him to indulge her fits.

He arrived back at his cottage with a plan, which he enacted immediately by writing letters. Some of the letters were favours long held, some of them pulling on emotional connections, and one of them a masterful manipulation that he found himself quite proud of, reading it back. They were dispatched all across the UK by the owls he usually used for his owl-order deliveries, and he moved onto the next task.

Obviously, quiet – and even loud – protests would continue to be ignored. If people wanted to get out from under this obscene law, they would have to act. And there was no better time to do so; the public was still riled up from the Anniversary of the Dark Lord's death, those who didn't fight still felt the guilt from that lack of participation. If the right figurehead came along to unite them, someone clever and bold and tenacious and charismatic, then it would not take much to convince them to rise against the Ministry. As a Slytherin, Severus instinctively shied away from such overt, drastic action, but it seemed to be the only solution. Such was the corner they had been backed into.

As a former Death Eater (he hated the word 'reformed', like he was a common criminal rather than a powerful Dark Wizard) it was dangerous to involve himself with any anti-establishment gang, but not so much with particular, individual people. For example, Harry Potter, who might be a dissident, but was a War Hero dissident in a way Severus simply could not be. Which was what found him at his house in Godric's Hollow, easily bypassing the wards to knock on the door.

It was opened by a mussed and irritated looking Ginny Potter, whose confrontational face melted into pale horror when she recognised him. He wouldn't deny enjoying that, not to himself. "Mrs. Potter," Severus drawled – drawled because it allowed him to control the reflexive gag he'd always had on the passing of that accursed title through his lips.

"P-Professor Snape," she stuttered out in shock. "What – what are you doing here?"

He let one eyebrow rise smoothly, and she gulped. "I was hoping to speak to Potter," he drawled, glancing behind her. "Is he in?"

Recovering, she frowned. "He is. You know, Snape, common courtesy is to  _call_  first."

"Even for 'old family friends'?" Severus drawled with considerable condescension, deliberately using the phrase Potter himself had used to describe him in an interview with the  _Prophet_ ; a more ridiculous euphemism Severus had never heard, considering his less than stellar relationship with the lad's father. Mrs. Potter winced visibly, leaving Severus to restrain a grin. "Come, Mrs. Potter. Is the lad in?"

She scowled, but pulled the door open and stepped aside. He ducked under the unnecessarily low frame and stepped into a homely hall, decorated tastefully with a cream wallpaper and darker brown carpet. Mrs. Potter flipped her hair as she closed the door. "You've got good timing, Snape, I'll give you that," she snapped darkly, sashaying her way down the hall. "He's just got back from work for lunch. You can talk while he eats. Harry?"

They emerged into a well-lit kitchen where Potter was seated at the end of a bench table, the contents of a sandwich scattered about as he put it together. Some left over beef, no doubt from a roast over the weekend, horseradish, some lettuce and tomatoes. He sliced each with considerably more deftness than he'd ever demonstrated in Severus's lessons, nimbly compiling his meal. "Yeah, Gin?" he mumbled, focused entirely on his task. Severus had to restrain himself from rolling his eyes – Potter had always had the peculiar habit of being entirely too obsessed with his food.

"You've got a visitor." Perhaps it was the tone in which she said those usually polite words that had him glancing up in confusion, his eyes widening dangerously when he caught sight of Severus. He dared not think what image he made in this pretty suburban kitchen, all bound up in his inky-black robes.

"Professor Snape!" He exclaimed in a near shout, jumping from his seat so quickly it sent the knife plummeting to the floor. Potter caught it, of course, with those reflexes that had made him such a superior seeker, twirling it absently across his fingers before he placed it back across his plate. Severus narrowed his eyes as this show of Michelin-style prowess, and Potter blushed –  _blushed_ , as though he was still eleven and not a man of nearly twenty. "Erm – did you want a sandwich?"

"No," he replied, elongating the word until he'd sneered it, compacting as much meaning as he possibly could into it until he might as well have called him a damned imbecile and it would have been less cutting.

"Didn't think so," Potter said chirpily, unperturbed, adding a bashful little smile to the bargain. "Probably best, anyway – Ginny cooked this beef, and she won't mind me telling you it's a bit…" another grimace as he waggled his hands exaggeratedly, letting out a huff of laughter when his wife smacked him across the back of the head in faux-offense. Severus cringed away from the scene of domestic contentment, his mind going to his own fiancée – he couldn't imagine a similar scene with Miss Brown; she seemed more predisposed to stab him should he make an ill-advised remark about her cooking than share in mild hilarity.

There was something very wrong with him that he  _preferred_ that scenario to this one.

The reminder of his  _fiancée_  spurred him to get to the point. "Potter, charming as this is, I didn't come here to watch you and Mrs. Potter  _canoodle_."

"Right, yes," Potter nodded, waving to a stool. "Sit down, Professor. I assume this is about the Marriage Act."

Severus eyed the little wooden stool with disdain, deciding to stand rather than risk the bound-to-be inelegant mounting. "Observant as ever. I find myself in an untenable position, and therefore offer my services to the cause."

"What cause?" Potter blinked like a dopey owl. "I'm sorry, Professor – I think you might have the wrong idea. The law has passed, our protests didn't work. There's really nothing more to do."

His eyebrow lifted quite of its own accord and Potter flinched automatically. Ah, it was so nice to know some things were ever-unchanging. "Protests, Potter? You're telling me this is all you had planned? A few speeches and a tepid little sit-in?"

Potter and his wife exchanged an uneasy look. They really were quite nauseatingly happy. "Look, Professor… I'm not looking to change the world. I've already done that. I can't win another war, I just … don't have the energy."

"Did I suggest war?" Severus snapped scathingly.

Mrs. Potter narrowed her eyes. "It sounds like that's what you want."

"Not at all," he replied, much more affably. "Rather, I was going to suggest taking a leaf out of the French's book."

"A revolution," Mrs. Potter said dubiously. "Really? It's not very…"

"British," Potter finished. "It's not really in the spirit of our country, is it?"

"If you want to be nationalistic, Potter, perhaps you might try sitting back and letting it happen, only to complain about it later in the pub when it doesn't turn out quite the way you wanted it to. You being a war hero,  _The_ War Hero, some might say, I presumed you'd be more active." He made a show of brushing off the front of his robes. "No matter; I see that I was wrong. Forgive the intrusion."

He was halfway to the door before Mrs. Potter stopped him. "My sister-in-law, Fleur," she said, quietly. "She's French, but she's also half-Veela. If you need someone to lead a revolution, she's the one you want. Men would follow her  _anywhere_ , trust me." She shoved something into his hand and glanced back at the kitchen door. "Harry's just scared. He's always been protective of me, and now that I'm pregnant again, he doesn't want to do anything that might end up affecting our child. However…"

She shrugged, grinning. "He's still The-Boy-Who-Lived, The Chosen One at heart. If you get a movement going, he won't be able to resist joining in." She nodded at his hand. "So get a movement going, Professor, and I'll see you on the front lines."

* * *

Lavender was day-drinking with Remus when Pansy turned up at the door. She'd been complaining his ears off, as usual, while he bore it with his customary grace (which is to say, he looked concerned for as long as he could hold the expression up, before his snickers started breaking through, and then he'd be chuckling at her, which only exacerbated her complaining, which only exacerbated his laughter… and so on and so forth in a never-ending cycle). Remus had the good sense not to  _look_  too relieved at her arrival, which protected him from a kick in the shins.

This time, Lavender hadn't been complaining about Snape being her fiancée, so he didn't really have room to complain. Okay, so she might still have been complaining about Snape, but it was a  _new_ complaint, and therefore far enough away from the  _original_ complaint that she couldn't see where he could have a problem with it. All she wanted was to actually  _see_ the bloke once in a while, okay? It had been – gods,  _days_  – since she'd last seen him, the night he broke in (yes,  _Remus_ , it's still breaking in if he wasn't invited by the  _owner_ of the damn house, which, by the by, is  _not you!_ ) and told her they were getting married. One would assume that he'd want to get to know his betrothed, but  _apparently not_.

Dickhead.

So when Pansy came stumbling in, looking shell-shocked, Remus ran straight to her side. One might think that would be his usual reaction to a rough looking woman coming in the door, but as this was the Headquarters for a pack of werewolves, no matter how small, dishevelled women were pretty much a fact of life. His reaction, therefore, betrayed his desperation for a change of subject.

Looking closer at Pansy, Lavender felt concern begin to flicker in her gut. Usually, after a run, Pansy looked bedraggled, mudspattered and grimy but refreshed, and would stumble into the kitchen in relatively high spirits (relatively because this was Pansy, and Pansy's high spirits made her a bit yappy, so they'd banned that), possibly dragging a rabbit behind her (alive, not dead – Pansy liked to catch them, but couldn't stand harming them. This didn't stop her from digging into rabbit stew at dinner, though). This time, however, she was doing no such thing, leaning on Remus for support as he led her over to the table.

"Pansy?" she asked, reaching over to take the girl's hand. Over her head, she mouthed 'tea' at Remus, who immediately set off towards the kettle. "Are you alright?"

"No," Pansy moaned, making big doe-eyes at Lavender. "Do I look alright?"

Ignoring Remus's frantic cutting motions, Lavender shrugged. "Well, you look like shite, but I'm too polite to say that." Remus groaned audibly as Pansy straightened up enough to hiss at her.

"I'm pregnant," Pansy whispered, then paled. "Oh, Circe, I'm  _pregnant_!" She gazed off into space for a few minutes then cursed loudly and colourfully. "Damn that bastard and his super-sperm! I should have known one contraceptive potion wouldn't cut it."

Remus went a little green as he handed over the cup of tea, backing away to his seat. Lavender could just sense him stifling the urge to cover his ears. "You slept with a Weasley," she reminded her friend, who glared. "You could have had your entire reproductive system removed and cauterised and he'd still have somehow managed to impregnate you."

It was  _supposed_ to be reassuring, but Pansy didn't seem to think so, instead letting out a wail of distress. "Damn that man! It wasn't even that  _good_!"

"Well," Lavender mused, "if it helps at all, at least he'll have plenty of opportunities to improve."

Pansy stared at her for a moment more, then shook her head rapidly, turning around to face Remus. "You understand what a disaster this is, right?"

"Erm," Remus shifted in his seat, looking around for an escape. "Did you want some more tea?"

Pansy grit her teeth. "No, I don't want some more tea. I want to not be the next Mrs. Weasley. Is there anything you can make to solve that problem?" Her eyes widening with sudden inspiration, she asked, "can't you just, like, eat him or something? The full moon is next week, right?"

Remus's eyebrows disappeared into his hair. "The full moon – I'm not eating him!"

"Well, why not?! What's the point of having a werewolf friend if they won't eat someone for you?! Lavender, you'll eat him, right?"

She shook her head. "Nope – been there, done that, didn't like the taste."

"Oh, what good are you!" Pansy snarled, slamming her mug down onto the table top. On reflex, she reached out to steal Lavender's glass of wine, then stopped with it half-way to her lips. "Oh – for fuck's sake!" she shrieked, shoving it over the table until it toppled, spilling its delightfully alcoholic contents onto the floor. "I hate you all!" She screamed, twirling and slamming her way back out again. The - _crack_ \- of her apparition was spitefully loud, causing the two of them to flinch.

Lavender observed the scene of destruction with a mournful sort of apathy, finally setting the glass upright and filling it again. "And you thought you had problems," Remus commented dryly. Lavender snorted through a mouthful of wine.

"She'll get over it when she realises this means her kids will get to be the only purebloods in their year," Lavender replied, sharing another smirk with him.

He stood from his seat, stretching. "Right, well, I'd best get on."

Nodding, she settled her glass back on the counter. "Right, yes, sorry, you came here to – what were you doing here again?"

Remus's reaction was amusing – like a deer in headlights. HE glanced away, muttering something under his breath that even she couldn't hear. "Could you repeat that, please?" she asked, smelling the opportunity for mischief.

"I left my Twix under the sofa," he repeated aloud, a blush burning his cheeks as he scowled at her.

Lavender shot him a wolfish smile. "Well, if that's all it is, why didn't you just go get them?"

Scowling even harder, Remus shoved up from his chair and stalked through to the living room. There was a pause, and then – "Lavender?"

"Yes, Remus?" she asked, grinning into her wine.

"They're not here..?" Remus called through, puzzlement cutting through his voice.

Lavender fought to keep the smirk out of her own. "I know."

Silence, and then Remus was at the kitchen door, watching her with a dangerous look on his face. "You  _know_..?"

"Oh, yes," she hummed, holding his gaze steadily. "Did I not say?"

"Say  _what_?" Remus growled – actually growled, which for Remus was basically a declaration of intent to murder, and she realised, again, that she should stop playing these games with her Alpha – who could definitely pummel her if he was so inclined.

But then… it was so fun to see him angry?

(Lavender is  _so_  grateful that the Incredible Hulk is not a real thing because if it was she was pretty certain she wouldn't be able to resist prodding him with a stick.)

Pushing her chair back, she measured the distance between her and the door, and then the distance between her and Remus. She could probably make it, if she ran. She stood up slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements, and shot him a cheery smile. "Oh, well… I ate them."

She did make it to the door, actually, but not much farther.

* * *

Lavender had to admit that she had absolutely zero intention of getting involved with Snape's one-man scheme to overturn the law – considering how she knew nothing about politics and didn't fancy Azkaban, there didn't, at the time, seem to be much in it for her that sitting in the comfort of her own house complaining loudly to friends wouldn't also give her – up until the moment Hermione Granger turned up, stressed and angry, and ratcheted the entertainment meter of the whole scheme up about 1000%. If there was anything that could get Lavender – or, for that matter, any member of her Pack – out of bed in the morning, it was the idea that somewhere in the world unadulterated chaos might be occurring, and if they were lucky and hurried, they might even get to be involved.

That this was a trait Remus shared with them had, at first, been surprising, until they joined the dots on the whole thing – he was a marauder, he's also a werewolf (which, according to Pansy, basically made him 'part-dog'. While completely wrong, this theory did explain some of his attraction to disaster), he was a prankster… still is, sometimes. They ended up wondering why they hadn't seen it earlier. No wonder he'd wanted to teach at Hogwarts. Under Dumbledore, that place was a ticking time-bomb of anarchic opportunity.

Anyway, she'd performed this u-turn, as mentioned, during a visit from Hermione precisely three days after her not-so-dashing suitor had unceremoniously dumped the paperwork on her and split to whatever cave he lived in nowadays. She'd turned up at the door, all mad-hair and ideals, without even Remus as an excuse.

"Why are you here?" Lavender had asked, because Hermione had always seen right through her and if she could be rude-as-fuck to anybody and actually be  _appreciated_ for it, that person would be Hermione Granger, for whom honesty is and always has been worth more than politeness.

"I can't find Professor Snape," Hermione said in a panicked voice, shouldering past Lavender into her house. And, just – how fucking brave of her to do that! She worked in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, which meant that she, of all people, should know exactly how territorial werewolves were. "I can't find him, and I know – I  _know_  – he's unsatisfied with this law. He'll be fighting against it, and I want to  _help him_."

Hermione came to an abrupt stop in the living room, taking in the design with slightly parted lips. "Oh… he's not here."

"No, he's not." Lavender said with amusement. "What did you expect, us to be shagging on the couch?"

Huffing, Hermione turned to Lavender. "Tell me where he is."

"Why should I do that?" Lavender asked, smirking. "He's my fiancé. Why would I want to send another desirable young woman, this one with intellect and beauty, into his desperately open arms? No, thank you."

Hermione stared at her, her expression telling Lavender that she wasn't buying it. That was fine, it wasn't what she was  _saying_ that was the point, it was the general obstruction. And the other girl got that, going by the anger flaring in her eyes. Then, just as quickly, her face shut down, and she stepped closer to Lavender, reaching out to grip her arm with a touch of desperation. "Lavender," she took a deep breath. "You  _have_ to help me. I can't let this law pass. I just can't."

"Well, that sucks for you, but I'm really not interested in getting involved so…" Lavender stepped aside, gesturing the door. Hermione didn't move, instead meeting Lavender's eyes straight on.

"They paired me with Lucius Malfoy."

A pin could have dropped. Lavender took a quick moment to assimilate that information, and then did the only thing she could do.

"Fine," she relented, ignoring the way Hermione's eyes lit up. "I'll Floo him. Give me two minutes."

She stomped out of the room, making a show of her reluctance, and closed herself in the bedroom. Quietly, she slipped out her wand, cast a silencing charm, and broke down laughing.

She couldn't help it.

Oh,  _Gods_ … Lucius Malfoy and  _Hermione Granger_.

Hermione Granger and  _Lucius Malfoy_.

There were actual  _tears_.

To think just this morning she'd been feeling bored. Hermione Granger was, in this way, a gift from the Gods. Never a dull moment, she was sure. Still tittering, she trod over to the fireplace – the only one connected to the Floo, and heavily warded, at that – and called out Severus's address.

"What do you want?" he demanded upon answering. A more charming man had never existed, she was sure.

"Oh, Snape," she snuffled through her tears of mirth. "Oh – Hermione and  _Malfoy_ , oh  _Gods,_ it's so fucking  _funny!_ "

"Stop talking nonsense, woman," Snape chastised her sharply. "Use. Your. Words."

"You know, you're a real shit, but not even you can ruin my mood right now -" her peals of laughter trailed off and she wiped her eyes, snorting one last time. "Guess who's in my living room."

"Must I?" He asked with a long-suffering sigh.

"The rest of the call won't make very much sense unless you do," Lavender told him in a sing-song voice, lowering herself to the floor and sitting cross-legged, settling in for the long-haul. "I'll give you a clue – you don't like them."

He shot her a sardonic glance that made her snicker, but for the most part seemed to give in. "Well, I know it's not Potter," he drawled, glancing at something outside of his fireplace. "Presumably it's one of your atrocious Gryffindor cohort, though only the Gods know why you'd inflict their presence on yourself, never mind me. You've not Floo-ed me in the middle of an assignation, have you?" He looked faintly ill at the thought, which, you know,  _unflattering,_ much?

"If they were, I'd be most disappointed. I mean, listen to me. Nary a moan in sight – not even a breathy sigh." She grimaced. "I've had some bad sex in my day but that would just take the biscuit."

"You are  _crude_ ," Snape told her, still looking nauseated.

"I have heard that about me," Lavender snarked back. "Come on, then, Snape. You were top of your class, surely you can guess."

He slapped an exhausted hand to his face and let out a low grown, which was probably the most dishevelled Lavender had ever seen him, and she'd seen him  _dead_. "Very well, you infuriating creature. Weasley?"

"You're the worst at this game," she scolded, too impatient to wait. "Hermione Granger."

His response was deliciously visceral – the recoil, the look of harried disgust, the curse he couldn't quite contain. Within a second he was back to his closed-up self, though, and stared her down through the flames. "And this has to do with me…  _why_?"

"She wants to join your merry band of revolutionaries," Lavender informed him with as little sarcasm as she could manage to keep out of it. "So you're really doing that, then?"

"What exactly is it about me that makes you think I'd lay down and let –  _this_ – happen?" he asked dryly, making an unflattering motion with his hands to indicate their betrothal.

She leaned back on her heels so that she could roll her eyes out of his sight and then pressed back in. "As flattering as that is," she said brightly, "would you like to come and talk to her, then?"

"Not particularly."

" _Will_  you, then?"

Another flicker of emotion. Gods, how did he manage to keep all of this on the inside? Lavender never could – all of the things she'd want to say would build up until her head exploded. It was admirable, in a way, she supposed. "Tell her I'll contact her later." He backed off as if that was a dismissal, but Lavender wasn't going to allow that.

"So what are you doing?"

Snape shot her a quizzical look. "Do you care?"

She fidgeted slightly. "Well, yes. It has to do with me too, you know."

He watched her suspiciously for a moment and then sighed. "I'll be visiting with Mrs. Fleur Weasley on the morrow," Snape said, observing the fire. "About the Marriage Law, and what we can do about it."

"I'm coming," Lavender insisted at once. Snape looked surprised, and really, he shouldn't be. Yes, she'd refused to get involved before, but this was different. This was Fleur Weasley, half-Veela, credible threat! When she started to feel possessive of Snape, Lavender didn't have a clue, but it was one thing for them to part of her decision and quite another thing for some Veela to come swanning in and steal him away under the guise of plotting sessions.

Lavender had a sudden, vivid image of the two of them sat at a table, Fleur's husband asleep upstairs, the two of them talking quietly by candlelight, Snape's dark hair a stark contrast against her beautiful blonde, him mooning after her like a twat –

She nodded firmly. "I'm coming," she repeated.

He looked as if he'd like to complain, but held himself back, tightly reigned. She wondered, for a brief moment, what it would be like to have him slip free of restraints. She was sure she could provoke it out of him; it was her special skill, after all. But for now, she'd simply stick to butting in on his plans.

"I'll pick you up at eight," he said, then gave her a sharp nod, and tossed a glass of water on the fire. She pulled back, spluttering, as the connection cut out.

"Dickhead," she muttered, getting back to her feet. She had a Hermione to disappoint – and she wasn't going to be easy about it. If she couldn't provoke Snape  _today_ , this was a fair replacement.


End file.
